On their own, they are three recognizable names from popular music. Individually, their singing styles are distinct and unique — signature voices unlike any other in music today.

Whether those three distinct and unique voices can perform together in harmony, or whether they will clash in a symphony of noise is a question that will be answered at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards this weekend in front of a worldwide television audience predicted to be in the tens of millions.

Rihanna performed alongside Coldplay at last year’s Grammys on the Mylo Xyloto single Princess of China — but that was less of a stretch, as Rihanna performed on the Coldplay album as well.

This time, there will be an aura of curiosity and anticipation, as there was in 2001 when rapper and thought-to-be homophobe Eminem paired with the openly bisexual Elton John for a performance of Eminem’s single Stan, from his 2000 LP Marshall Mathers.

Elton John will perform in a duet again at the Grammys, this time with Song of the Year nominee Ed Sheeran. Country artists Dierks Bentley and Miranda Lambert are also slated to perform together, but the pairing of country artists doesn’t have the same cachet or curiosity factor of hip hop mashed together with contemporary pop and classic rock.

The sudden death of Whitney Houston on the eve of last year’s Grammys cast a shadow over the ceremony, and permeated every performance, and every word spoken on the air.

Months after the Grammys aired, Ehrlich realized behind-the-scenes cameras had captured reflective, philosophical confessions featuring Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl, Bruce Springsteen and Joe Walsh — who had closed the show with a rousing performance of The Beatles songs Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End — along with Adele, Katy Perry and numerous others.

Ehrlich elected to edit the footage into an hour-long homage, The Grammys Will Go On: A Death in the Family, which will air Saturday, on the eve of the Grammys ceremony.

The program will look at how producers, performers and presenters made last-minute changes to the Grammys program, in the minutes and hours after Houston was found unconscious and later pronounced dead in her hotel room at the Grammys’ host hotel, on Feb. 11, 2012, the day before last year’s Grammys aired.

Jennifer Hudson, who broke down on live television after paying homage to Houston with a searing rendition of Houston’s I Will Always Love You, will share her private thoughts and recollections, along with Taylor Swift, Grohl, Perry, Springsteen, LL Cool J and record impresario Clive Davis.

“I don’t want to say it unmasks everything, because it doesn’t,” Ehrlich said. “But it will give people a look at something you very rarely get to see.

“We tell the Whitney story, but we also look at these other things as well, in as much depth as we can.”

Time, and distance, has a way of healing.

“We didn’t plan to do this, frankly, but the idea came together several months later, when we finally saw the footage,” Ehrlich said.

Executive producer Ken Ehrlich, second from left, and NCIS: Los Angeles star LL Cool J, second from right, at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in January. (Sonja Flemming/CBS)

Ehrlich is a music institution in his own right. He has been the Grammys’ executive producer since 1980. During that time, he has seen his share of ups and downs, highs and lows, but nothing to compare with last year.

Much of what viewers saw in the final broadcast was decided at the last minute, in some cases literally.

“Paul McCartney was going to close the show with 1985 from Band on the Run,” Ehrlich recalled. “Friday, two days before the show, I got a call from him saying, ‘I woke up, I couldn’t sleep, I woke up in the middle of the night and though, I’m closing the Grammys.’ Then he said to me, ‘Would it be OK if we did the finale from Abbey Road?’ I told him, ‘Well, maybe that will be all right.’ That was easy. We didn’t have to even talk about that. Then, on Saturday, it grew with Dave Grohl and Joe Walsh. And then, Saturday afternoon, Bruce came in.

“We always start with some thought about what we’re going to do, and those thoughts develop over this intense six- or seven-week period that we have to put the show together. Invariably, though, when you look back at the shows on tape, there are things that happen in the moment that turn out to be much bigger than you thought they were going to be at the time. The moments we create, we have no way of promoting them ahead of time because they happen in the moment.”

Serendipity plays a crucial role in shaping the moments music fans and Grammy watchers remember, Ehrlich told Postmedia News.

“There is no process, honestly. You wake up in the middle of the night, and an idea may hit you. Some pairings are logical. Some are not logical at all.

“It’s come a long way, though. In the beginning, it wasn’t easy to get people to go along with it. I’ve done the show for 33 years. The first duet I did was Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand, in 1980.

“What it is, I think — and I mean no disrespect to the other shows — is that people want to bring their A-game to the Grammys. They want to do things they might not do on other shows. We encourage it. We nurture it. When they come to us, it’s very competitive. God knows, they want to be the best act on the Grammys. That can happen in any number of ways, not all of which are duets or combinations.

“They never used to bring these ideas to us, though. Now they do. They come in and say, ‘Well, what about this? Me with this person? Or what about that person with me?’

“It’s like the UN, you know? It becomes back-and-forth diplomacy.”

The Grammys Must Go On: A Death in the Family airs Saturday, Feb. 9, on Global and CBS, at 9 ET/PT, 10 MT.

The 55th Annual Grammy Awards are the following night, on Sunday, Feb. 10, also on Global TV and CBS, at 8 ET/PT, 9 MT.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/grammys-whitney-houstons-story-to-take-spotlight/feed0Bobby Brown and Whitney HoustonalxstrachanTelevision Critics AssociationColdplay press pause on career, announce three-year breakhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/coldplay-press-pause-on-career-announce-three-year-break
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/coldplay-press-pause-on-career-announce-three-year-break#commentsFri, 23 Nov 2012 19:45:28 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=155929]]>Coldplay is expected to light up Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on New Year’s Eve with the help of several thousand of those blinky Mylo Xyloto bracelets they’ve been handing out at every tour stop — and, you know, co-headliner Jay-Z.

(This might be the right moment to shamelessly remind you of our contest to win passes to that very show. Enter here.)

But once the confetti has been cleared and the black-lights dimmed, what happens to Coldplay?

According to the band, they’ll be taking a break.

For three years.

Some 52,500 people heard Coldplay frontman Chris Martin say as much this week in Brisbane, Australia. (Billboard, thankfully, was taking notes.)

“This is the last big show for three years or so,” the singer told the sold-out crowd at the city’s Suncorp Stadium Wednesday night. “I don’t want to stop.”

Technically, he’s not done yet, so he got his wish. There are those NYE shows in Brooklyn — Coldplay is booked to appear at the Barclays Center for Dec. 30 and 31 — and their concert schedule includes an arena date in Uncasville, CT Dec. 29.

But yeah, once 2013 begins, Coldplay is apparently pressing pause on operations — perhaps surprising considering they were hinting at album No. 6 just days ago.

In an interview with Australian radio station 2dayfm (via Gigwise), the band revealed they’d already started work on Mylo Xyloto‘s follow-up, and that it’d improve upon some of that 2011 disc’s quirks. Specifically, the average Coldplay fan will be able to pronounce the title.

When asked to share the name of the record, Martin wouldn’t budge, though. “I can’t tell you that!” he joked, before asking guitarist Jonny Buckland, “Can I give a hint?” The response? Negative.

Earlier this month, the band announced that they were pulling out of a string of shows in Latin America. “With much regret, we have been forced to postpone our recently announced Latin America tour dates due to unforeseen circumstances. We’re very sorry to everyone who was looking forward to the shows and we hope to reschedule them soon,” the band wrote on their website Nov. 16. It’s unclear if those potential make-up dates will have to hold off for another three years.

But while Martin resigns himself to puttering around the pied-a-terre, making Gwyneth macrobiotic smoothies — and probably some for Jonny, Guy and Will, too — Coldplay fans can just keep reliving the good old days. (Those days being 2012.) Coldplay Live 2012, a concert film of the group’s Mylo Xyloto tour, arrived this week.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/coldplay-press-pause-on-career-announce-three-year-break/feed8ColdplayleahdoseColdplay Live 2012 sneak peek: ‘Clocks’ live in Montreal (Canadian exclusive)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/coldplay-live-2012-sneak-peek-clocks-live-in-montreal-canadian-exclusive
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/coldplay-live-2012-sneak-peek-clocks-live-in-montreal-canadian-exclusive#commentsThu, 08 Nov 2012 15:56:21 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=146384]]>For Coldplay’s upcoming concert film, Live 2012, the band collected footage throughout their Mylo Xyloto world tour. Director Paul Dugdale (Adele’s Live at the Royal Albert Hall) rolled tape in Paris, at Glastonbury — and right here in Canada, capturing Coldplay’s appearance at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

And it’s footage from that show that’s featured in this sneak peek at Live 2012 — a clip of Coldplay storming through their 2002 classic, “Clocks.”

Described by director Dugdale as a blend of “colour-drenched performance” and “candid portraits of the band” the Live 2012 tour film/live album arrives November 20.

If you want the easy answer, it’s the title of Coldplay’s mega-selling current album. (According to the Guardian, it’s sold more than 6 million copies since its October 2011 release.)

The band itself has dithered on the disc’s etymological meaning, however. It was inspired by “the randomness of the universe,” frontman Chris Martin said during a stint on The Colbert Report. “It’s just a great name. For anything,” he told the New York Times.

Shenanigans, boys.

When even a pop star like Kelly Clarkson can’t make sense of your album title — “I don’t know how to say it. I call it ‘Xylo Moto.’ I’m like ‘I don’t know what the hell it is, but I LOVE that album,” an adorably frustrated Clarkson ranted to us last winter — you’ve got some ‘splaining to do.

And ‘splain they shall — provided you’ve got six months to listen to them. Coldplay’s releasing a six-issue, monthly comic book series that will unpack the meaning behind Mylo Xyloto, the band announced via their official website. As Spider-Man, Batman, etc. all know, there ain’t no origin story like a comic-book origin story, and as the band revealed, they’ve recruited screenwriter Mark Osborne (Kung-Fu Panda) to oversee the project, which also involved Martin and Coldplay manager Phil Harvey.

Featuring artwork by Alejandro Fuentes, the first issue will be released at Comic Con Thursday, July 12, USA Today reports. The series will formally launch in February 2013, with new volumes of the series arriving monthly via Matt Groening’s Bongo Comics.

“Three years ago we had an idea with our friend Mark Osborne about a character called Mylo Xyloto — ‘xylo’ as in xylophone, ‘to’ as in toe,” the band writes in an announcement posted to their website. As the Guardian reports, Coldplay and Osborne had originally developed the Mylo Xyloto project as a “music-driven animated film” that would be like “a new kind of Yellow Submarine.”

“Gradually Mylo’s story and universe came together and this ended up providing the backdrop for the album and tour,” Coldplay writes.

As for the comic books’ story, a Q&A with Osborne posted to Coldplay’s site provides the following details about the plot:

“Well, all I will say is it is the story of Mylo Xyloto, a young Silencer on the front lines of a war against sound and color in the world of Silencia. Mylo discovers that the enemy he’s been trained to hate his whole life might not be the enemy after all.”

Sure. So, what’s a Mylo Xyloto, again?

Coldplay is currently on tour in North America. They’ll reach Toronto July 23 and 24, Montreal July 26 and 27.